About the High Line

The High Line is a new public park, built on an elevated 1930s rail structure located on Manhattan's West Side. It runs from Gansevoort Street in the Meatpacking District to 34th Street. The first section of the High Line opened to the public in June 2009. The High Line is property of the City of New York, and is maintained and operated by the non-profit Friends of the High Line, in partnership with the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation.

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The Sundance Channel has just debuted a series of ten short vignettes featuring people involved with the High Line project, from photographer Joel Sternfeld, above, to Kevin Bacon, to lead designer James Corner. The series, “High Line Stories”, is available to view on their web site, and will be broadcast on The Sundance Channel throughout the summer.

This week, artist Spencer Finch began to install his site-specific glass work in the High Line’s Chelsea Market Passage, a semi-enclosed former loading dock between 15th and 16th Streets. The piece, entitledThe River That Flows Both Ways, is made up of 700 individual panes of glass, each hued to represent a color of light reflected off the Hudson River.

The art piece has been commissioned by Friends of the High Line with public art superstars Creative Time, as the first of a series of large-scale, site-specific art works for the Chelsea Market Passage. Set to debut in June, at the same time as the High Line opens, the piece will be in place for at least the first year of the High Line’s operation. This art program is made possible through a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation’s New York City Cultural Innovation Fund.

Renowned graphic designer Milton Glaser is the subject of a new documentary directed by one of the High Line’s very first and most loyal supporters, Wendy Keys.

Titled “Milton Glaser: To Inform and Delight,” the film opens this Friday, May 22, at Cinema Village. It looks at Glaser’s long and fascinating career, as he creates iconic designs, including the “I ♥ NY” campaign. Glaser is a Charter Member of Friends of the High Line. Wendy Keys, a Board Member of Friends of the High Line, has been a supporter since 2000.

Metropolismag.com has published an interesting article on a remarkable pair of architect/developers, Della Valle + Bernheimer (DB). Led by the duo of Jared Della Valle and Andrew Bernheimer, they have begun to make their mark on the Chelsea neighborhood by “combining design excellence with the terrors and pleasures of real estate development.” DB are responsible for two of the more prominent buildings currently visible from the High Line, 459 West 18th Street and 245 Tenth Avenue, the latter of which can be seen flanking Section 2 of the High Line, still under construction.

The article describes the area around the High Line as a “starchitect” district because of the presence of projects by famed architects Frank Gehry and Jean Nouvel, among many others. Regardless of the popularity and increasing presence of such “starchitect” buildings and other more prominent DB projects in the area, the most popular Della Valle Bernheimer work among the Friends of the High Line staff remains the superbly designed Friends of the High Line offices, where the staff spends its time making the High Line happen.

The Gowanus Canal is a 1.8 mile long formerly industrial waterway in South Brooklyn. Much like the High Line, the canal has now fallen into disuse. Our friends over at the Gowanus Canal Conservancy are working hard to transform the canal into a vibrant public space, through its preservation, restoration, and green development.

Work has begun on an exciting design for a new linear park along the canal, the Gowanus Canal Sponge Park. The design would give the canal’s banks new life by granting the community access to the canal in a way it has not had before, developing publicly usable areas and creating a public esplanade on both sides of the Gowanus Canal.

To get all this done, they are now introducing Clean & Green — a volunteer clean-up program to get those debris-filled street ends along the Gowanus Canal into shape!

[Peter Brown, Author/Illustrator, demonstrates his technique at a reading for elementary school students]

This Sunday’s New York Times Book Review featured a review of its current #2 best-selling children’s book: The Curious Garden, a lushly illustrated tale of a boy who finds an expanse of flowers and plants growing in the most unlikely of places: an abandoned elevated rail line.

In last week’s Book Review podcast, author and illustrator Peter Brown talks about his inspiration for the story: the High Line, “this lush, wild garden area that was taking care of itself. It was really this pretty miraculous site. And so when I discovered that place, when I first moved to New York, I decided that I wanted to make a book about nature living in the city in sort of an unlikely way.”

You can listen to the interview here. If you missed the readings at 192 Books and Books of Wonder, check out Peter Brown’s web site for information on upcoming readings.

The Standard Hotel (you may have heard of it) will serve as the welcome center to this year’s Meatpacking District Design Week. From May 14th – May 17th the Meatpacking District Initiative will host various events and exhibits throughout the neighborhood, including a viewing of the architectural model for the planned Whitney Museum of American Art on Gansevoort Street–future home of the High Line Maintenance + Operations headquarters.

For those interested in clean, green designs (think High Line!), the Green and Clean Design Panel Discussion will be held on May 18th from 10:00AM-12:00PM where a panel of leading international green thinkers will discuss two topics: “Thinking Green – the Future of Our Cities” and “Creating Green – How Design Can Help.”

View the full schedule of the exhibits and events here.
View the Meatpacking District Initiative Web site here.